Dear Milk Share Members,
Our goal to offer high quality safe food to our community has recently been challenged in the reality of the radioactivity being released into our environment. In the past weeks radioactive levels have increased in Hawaii, with high spikes and a more current leveling off of radiation levels. Milk from the large dairies in Hamakua and Hawi has shown elevated levels of radiation, from 400 to 2400 times the recognized safe levels.

Why is milk contamination significant in the world of agriculture? Because milk represents the overall condition of the entire food chain, since cows consume grass and are exposed to the same elements as crops. So, when milk tests positive for radiation, it indicates the entire food chain is contaminated since cows eat grass. When grass is contaminated everything grown in the same soil is contaminated. This has proposed a serious concern to us farmers, with us asking what can we do? After much consideration, research, and conversations with much appreciated experts in the field of biological farming and human & animal health, we have found some things which we are able to do to protect our soil, animals, and bodies.

Aside from the much recognized supplement potassium iodine as a protection against radioactive iodine, there are a number of ways we can help. We have remembered our friend, elemental boron and the position it plays on the earth. Boron is the only mineral capable of accepting and ionizing radiation that never changes the innards or the nucleus of the cell. Spoken simply, boron can take radiation and release it without upsetting its own very delicate balance.